The Californians

by Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn

  "We keep very much to ourselves," said Magdaléna, gravely. "We never care to know new people unless we are sure that we shall like them."

  To flirt with her a little, or rather to flirt at her, was irresistible. He bent over her, smiling and compelling her gaze. "And how can I be sure that you will not find me wanting?" he asked; "not like me at all a month hence? I think I should wait at least that time before buying this place."

  She shook her head seriously. "I am sure we are all going to like you. While you were with papa last night, Tiny and Ila and Mrs. Washington and Rose and Caro all said they hoped you would buy the Mark Smith place. Ila said she had not come back to California to talk to children; and Tiny—who is not really enthusiastic—said you were one of the few men she ever wanted to see a second time. Mrs. Washington said, 'A man-of-the-world at this last end of creation, stepping off landing—'"

  "I am more flattered than I can possibly express, but I want to know what you think about it. Shall you tire of me?"

  "Oh, I think not. I am sure I shall not."

  "Do you want me to buy this place?"

  She looked at him helplessly. Instinct whispered that he was unfair, but she had no anger for him. "I—I—think I do," she said. "I—I think you know I do." And then she did feel a little angry with him.

  He drew back at once. "You are my first friend, you know," he said in his ordinary manner. "I should not think of settling near you unless I were sure of not boring you. But I believe we have tastes in common, and I hope you will let me come over often."

  "You will be always welcome," she said formally. Her anger had gone, leaving a chill in its wake.

  The char-à-banc drove up. Mrs. Yorba descended simultaneously. Her virtues were many, and one of them was punctuality.

  * * *

  XX

  The Montgomerys' house was next in age to the Yorbas', but neither so large nor so solid. Even its verandah, however, had a more homelike air; its carpets and rugs were old but handsome; and it was full of pretty trifles, and much carved furniture, gathered in Europe. The lawns were small, the grounds carelessly kept, but there were many fine old trees and a wilderness of flowers.

  Coralie Brannan and Lee Tarlton, Mrs. Montgomery's little ward, were romping on the lawn as the Yorbas drove up. Tiny and Ila were sitting on the verandah. The former was in her favourite white, and a hat and sash of azure. Ila wore a superlatively smart frock of yellow silk muslin, and a yellow sun-hat covered with red poppies.

  Trennahan saw the flash of dismay from Magdaléna's eyes before her face settled into its most stolid expression. He felt genuinely sorry for her, but his only part was to get out and hand these radiant visions into the char-à-banc.

  "It is so nice to think that you may be a neighbour of ours," said Tiny, sweetly, as Ila was kissing Mrs. Yorba, and asking if she were not a good girl to meet her halfway. "We shall really be glad to have you."

  "We shall make him forget that he has not lived here always," said Ila, with her most brilliant smile. She was much elated at the unexpected foil. "He will become quite one of us."

  "I am sure he would not think of settling elsewhere in California," said Mrs. Yorba. And then she added with what for her was extreme graciousness, "My husband and I shall be very glad to have him for neighbour."

  Trennahan murmured his thanks. He was deeply amused. That he was the representative of one of the proudest families in a State some three hundred years old mattered nothing to these Californians of Menlo Park. Is it catching, I wonder? he thought. If some of my English friends should come out here five years hence, should I patronise them? Doubtless, for it is like living on another planet. Exclusiveness is the very scheme of its nature. It is encouraging to think that I have yet another phase to live through.

  Ila claimed his attention and kept it as they rolled down the dusty road toward the Mark Smith place. Tiny, after a futile attempt to engage Magdaléna in conversation, devoted herself prettily to Mrs. Yorba and talked of the plans for the summer.

  Magdaléna was acutely miserable. Her exaltation of spirits was a bare memory. She hated her dowdy frock, her glaring contrast to the vivid Ila, accentuated by that grotesque similarity of attire. She listened to Ila's brilliant chatter and recalled her own halting phrases, her narrow vocabulary, and wondered angrily at the conceit which had prompted her to hope that she was overcoming her natural deficiencies.

  Then she remembered that she was a Yorba, and drew herself up in lonely pride. It was a privilege for these girls to be intimate with her, to call her 'Léna, great as might be their social superiority over the many in San Francisco whose names she had never heard. In her inordinate pride of birth, in her intimate knowledge of the fact that she was the daughter of a Californian grandee who still possessed the three hundred thousand acres granted his fathers by the Spanish crown, she in all honesty believed no one of these friends of her youth to be her equal, although she never betrayed herself by so much as a lifting of the eyebrow. She had questioned, after her loss of religion, if it were not her duty to train down her pride, but had concluded that it was not; it injured no one, and it was a tribute she owed her race. She liked Trennahan the better that he had discovered and approved this pride.

  * * *

  XXI

  Magdaléna did not see Trennahan alone again; he did not ask her to ride with him on the following morning, and left for town immediately after breakfast. But before taking his seat in the char-à-banc he held her hand a moment and assured her with such emphasis that he owed the great pleasure of his visit entirely to her, that her spirits, which had been in weeds, flaunted into colour and song; and she went at once to her nook in the woods, feeling that the fire in her mind was nothing less than creative.

  But she did not write for some time. The sun was already intensely hot; even in those depths the air was heavy, the heat waves shimmered among the young green of the undergrowth.

  Magdaléna stretched herself out lazily and looked up into the green recesses of the trees. The leaves were rustling in a light hot wind. She fancied that they sang, and strained her ears to catch the tune. It looked so cool and green and dark up there; surely the birds, the squirrels, the very tree-toads,—those polished bits of malachite,—must be happy and fond in their storeyed palace. What a poem might be written about them! but they would not raise their voices above that indefinite murmur, and the straining ears of her soul heard not either.

  She sat up and began to write, endeavouring to shake some life into her heroine, but only succeeding in making her express herself in very affected old English, with the air of a marionette.

  Then mechanically, almost unconsciously, she began the story again. At the end of an hour she discovered that she had dressed up Trennahan in velvet and gold, doublet and hose. She laughed with grim merriment. Ignorant as she was, she was quick to see the incongruity between modern man in his quintessence and the romantic garments of a buried century. Also, her hero had addressed his startled friends in this wise:

  "I can't stand that rat-hole any longer. I'm going to stay down here with the rest of you, whether I'm hanged for it or not."

  This was undoubtedly what Trennahan would have said; but not the Cavalier, Lord Hastings of Fairfax. She had a vague prompting that on the whole it was preferable to,—

  "Gadsooks, my bold knights, and prithee should a man rot in a rat-ridden cupboard while his friends make merry? Rather let him be drawn and quartered, then fed to ravens, but live while he may."

  But she dismissed the thought as treason to letters, and proceeded on her mistaken way with the Lady Eleanora Templemere. Shakspere and Scott were her favourite writers; she felt that she must fumble into the sacred lines of literature by such feeble rays as they cast her. She liked and admired the great realists whose bones were hardly dust; but they did not inspire her, taught her nothing.

  * * *

  XXII

  The next morning, as she was starting for the woods, rather later than usual, Dick, the stab
le-boy, who had just returned from the post-office, detached a letter from a packet he was handing the butler and ran after her. As Helena was her only correspondent, she marvelled at the strange handwriting, but opened the letter more promptly than most women do in the circumstances. It was from Trennahan and read:

  Dear Miss Yorba,—I have virtually bought the place. That is to say, I shall buy it as soon as the deeds are made out. Meanwhile, I am looking for servants and hope to move down on Monday next at latest. Mr. Smith has also consented to sell me his stud, which, your father tells me, is exceptionally fine. So, you see, I am really to be your neighbour, and am hoping you are friendly enough not to be displeased. At all events, I shall give myself the pleasure of riding over on Monday evening, and hope that you will join me in another ride on the following morning. Meanwhile, can I do anything for you in town? Is there anything that you would care to read? Pray command me.

  Faithfully,

  J. S. Trennahan.

  Never was there a more commonplace or business-like note, but it seemed a miracle of easy grace to Magdaléna: it was the first note of any sort that she had received from a man not old enough to be her father. She invested it with all the man's magnetism, and heard it enunciated in his cultivated voice. She imagined it delivered in the nasal tones of her uncle, or in the thick voice of the youth that had sat on her left at the birthday dinner,—she had forgotten his name,—and shuddered.

  She recalled that her mother had received an envelope directed by the same hand the night before; but that, doubtless, had been a mere note of politeness. He had written this because he wished to do so!

  She spent the entire morning answering the note, and discovered that it was as easy to write a book. After tearing up some twenty epistles, she concluded that the following, when copied on her best note-paper, and compared with the dictionary, would do,—

  Dear Mr. Trennahan,—I am glad that you have bought the Mark Smith place. There is nothing that I want. Many thanks.

  Yours truly,

  Magdaléna Yorba.

  * * *

  XXIII

  On the following Monday Don Roberto had a cold and did not go to town, but sunned himself on the verandah, alternately sipping whiskey and eating quinine pills. Magdaléna dutifully kept him company, and the whiskey having made him unusually amiable, he talked more than was his wont with the women of his family. In his way he was fond of his daughter, deeply as she had disappointed him; and, had she known how to manage him, doubtless her girlish wants would have met with few rebuffs. But that would have meant another Magdaléna.

  "I like this Trennahan," he announced. "He prefer talk with me than with the young mens, and he know plenty good stories, by Jimminy! He have call on me at the bank three times, and I have lunch with him one day. Damn good lunch. He is what Jack call thoroughbred, and have the manners very fine. I like have him much for the neighbour. He ask myself and Eeram and Washeengton to have the dinner with him on Thursday and warm the house. He understand the good wine and the tabac, by Scott! I feel please si he ask me plenty time, and I have him here often."

  Magdaléna was delighted with these unexpected sentiments. She pressed her lips together twice, then said,—

  "He asked me if I could ride again with him to-morrow morning."

  "I have not the objection to you ride all you want it with Mr. Trennahan, si you not go outside the place. Need not take that boy, for he have the work; and I have trust in Mr. Trennahan."

  He would, indeed, have welcomed Trennahan as a son-in-law. Magdaléna must inherit his wealth as well as the immense fortune of her uncle; neither of these worthy gentlemen had the least ambition to be caricatured in bronze and accumulate green mould as public benefactors. Nor did Don Roberto regret that he had no son, having the most profound contempt for the sons of rich men, as they circled within his horizon. It would be one of the terms of his will that Magdaléna's first son should be named Yorba, and that the name should be perpetuated in this manner until California should shake herself into the sea.

  He had long since determined that Magdaléna should marry no one of the sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger fashionable set. Nor would he leave his money in trust for trustees to fatten on. Ever since Magdaléna's sixteenth birthday he had been on the look-out for a son-in-law to his pattern. The New Yorker suited him. A wealthy man himself, Trennahan's motives could not be misconstrued. His birth and breeding were all that could be desired, even of a Yorba. He understood the value of money and its management. And he was well past the spendthrift age.

  Don Roberto and Mr. Polk had discussed the matter between them; and these two wily old judges of human nature had agreed that Trennahan must become the guardian of their joint millions. Magdaléna was her father's only misgiving. Would a man with an exhaustive experience of beautiful women be attracted into marriage by this ugly duckling? But Trennahan had passed his youth. Perhaps, like himself, he would have come to the conclusion that it was better to have a plain wife and leave beauty to one's mistresses. He had not the slightest objection to Trennahan having a separate establishment; in fact, he thought a man a fool who had not.

  Little escaped his sharp eyes. He had noted Trennahan's interest in Magdaléna, the length of the morning ride, his daughter's sparkling eyes at breakfast. Propinquity would do much; and the bait was dazzling, even to a man of fortune.

  He became aware that Magdaléna was speaking.

  "I have no habit; and Ila says that they intend to have riding parties."

  "You can get one habit. Go up to-morrow and order one."

  Magdaléna felt a little dazed, and wondered if everything in her life were changing.

  "I hear wheels," she said after a moment. They were on the verandah on the right of the house. She stood up and watched the bend of the drive. "It is the Montgomery char-à-banc," she said, "and there are Mrs. Cartright and Tiny and Ila and Rose. Shall you stay?"

  "I stay. Bring them here to me. Tiny and Ila beautiful girls. Great Scott! they know what they are about. Rose very pretty, too."

  The char-à-banc drew up; and as its occupants did not alight, Magdaléna went down and stood beside it, shading her eyes with her hand.

  "We have come to take you for a drive to the hills, 'Léna dear," said Tiny. "Do come."

  "Papa has a bad cold. I cannot leave—"

  "Poor dear Don Roberto!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartright. "I will get out this minute and speak to him. I know so many remedies for a cold,—blackberry brandy, or currant wine, or inhaling burnt linen and drinking hot water—" But she was halfway down the verandah by this time.

  "Do you remember the last time we went to the hills?" asked Ila. "Helena and Rose shrieked with such hilarity that the horses bolted."

  "I can answer for myself," said Rose. "I may say that the memory was burnt in with a slipper."

  "I never was spanked," murmured Tiny. "That is one of the many things I am grateful for. It must be so humiliating to have been spanked."

  "Who can tell what futures may lie in a slipper?" replied Rose, who had a reputation for being clever. "I am sure that my slipperings, for instance, generated a tendency for epigram; something swift and sharp. It destroyed the tendency to bawl continuously,—the equivalent of the great national habit of monologue."

  "Rose, you are quite too frightfully clever," said Tiny, with an assumption of languor. "You will be writing a book next."

  "I will make 'Léna the heroine," retorted Rose, with a keen glance, "and call it 'The Sphinx of Menlo Park.'"

  "Fancy 'Léna being called a sphinx," said Ila, who was looking very bored. "Are you coming, 'Léna, or not? I suppose you don't want to be kept standing in the sun."

  "Oh, we're all used to that," said Rose. "I have three new freckles that I owe to Mrs. Washington and Caro Folsom. They called yesterday and kept me standing in the sun exactly three quarters of an hour before they made up their minds to co
me in and stay ten minutes."

  "I'd like to go—"

  Mrs. Cartright returned, shaking her head.

  "Don Roberto does not want to be left alone," she said. "I fortunately thought of a most wonderful remedy for colds, and I have also been telling him about a terrible cold General Lee had once when he was staying with us. He did look so funny, dear great man, with his head tied up in one of old Aunt Sally's bandannas—"

  "Please excuse me for interrupting you, dear Mrs. Cartright," said Tiny, firmly; "but I think we had better get out and talk to Don Roberto, and go to the hills another day when 'Léna can go with us. Don't you think that would be best?" she murmured to the other girls. "We might help to amuse him a little."

  "It will be vastly to our credit," said Rose, "for he certainly won't amuse us."

  "Has anyone ever been amused here?" asked Ila, looking at Magdaléna, who was politely listening to Mrs. Cartright's anecdote. "Fancy having the biggest house in the smartest county in California and making no more of it than if it were a cottage. The rest of the houses are so cut up; but fancy what dances we could have here."

  "I have been thinking over a plan," said Tiny, "and that is to try to manage Don Roberto. 'Léna can't, but I think the rest of us could, and Mrs. Yorba likes to give parties."

  "I am told that in early days there was an extra burst of lawlessness after each of her balls,—reaction," said Rose.

  "I don't think that it is nice for us to be discussing people at their very doorstep," said Tiny. "I just thought I'd mention my plan. And if it succeeded, and all took charge, as it were, there need be no stiffness in an informal party in the country. Shall we get out?"

  "By all means, General Tom Thumb," said Rose, with some ire; "it is very plain who is to be boss in this community, as Mrs. Washington would say."